A Cryptocurrency Miner is being run on The Pirate Bay Website’s JavaScript

Four years ago several popular torrent sites joined an option to distribute via Bitcoin. The Pirate Bay was one of the first to hop on board and still places its address on the website.

While there’s zero wrong with using Bitcoin as a contribution tool, adding a Javascript cryptocurrency worker to a site is of a totally different order.

A few moments ago many Pirate Bay users began seeing that their CPU usage rose dramatically when they perused certain Pirate Bay pages. Upon closer examination, this spike appears to have been made by a Bitcoin miner embedded on the site.

The code in the subject is tucked away in the site’s footer and uses a worker provided by Coinhive. This service offers site users the option to convert the CPU power of users into Monero coins.

The worker does indeed seem to increase CPU usage really a bit. It is throttled at different rates researchers seen both 0.6 and 0.8 but the increase in resources is instantly noticeable.

The miner is not allowed site-wide. When we reviewed, it appeared in the search results and category listings, but not on the homepage or private torrent pages.

There has been no correct comment from the site administrators on the issue update, see below, but many users have criticized about it. In the official site forums, TPB supermoderator Sid is clearly not in accordance with the site’s latest addition.

“That really is dangerous, so hopefully we can get some action on it quickly. And possibly get some attention for the uploading and commenting bugs while they’re at it,” Sid writes.

Like many others, he also shows out that blocking or disabling Javascript can stop the automated mining. This can be done via browser environments or through script blocker add-ons such as NoScript and ScriptBlock. Alternatively, users can block the miner URL with an ad-blocker.

I am a programmer and tech enthusiast who loves to use my creative skills to solve complex solutions. I also love to stay abreast of what is happening in the world of technology, reach me at: [email protected]

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Harikrishna Mekala

I am a programmer and tech enthusiast who loves to use my creative skills to solve complex solutions. I also love to stay abreast of what is happening in the world of technology, reach me at: [email protected]